ReadyNAS NV+ v2 Software Specifications

The ReadyNAS Duo and NV+ v2 are designed for home use and small businesses. Nowadays, the typical home environment looks very similar to a small business anyways. When you have to combine the latest high tech devices, the legacy hardware and applications that everyone still has hanging around, the need to grant granular access to multiple terabytes of data with varying sensitivity, unified communications, and peripheral sharing - it's a daunting challenge. I also challenge you to tell me whether that last sentence refers to a small business or your own home network.

The Software feature list is small, but growing. There are a number of Add-Ons available in the ReadyNAS Community.

Besides the core features available in the NETGEAR's RAIDiator 5.3.5 (ARM) firmware for the ReadyNAS network attached storage products, further capabilities are available from both NETGEAR and the ReadyNAS Community. Factory add-ons can be installed easily through the Local Update tab in the FrontView application. If you don't find what you want there, check out the ReadyNAS Community Add-on site. Many of the add-ons are for the other two NAS platforms, x86 and SPARC, but more are being added for the ARM-based models all the time. It pays to check back, or put yourself on the subscription list.

Comments

Not having the drive trays labeled is a major annoyance as are the restrictive controller specifications, not being able to upgrade or expand the NIC capabilities, and not having a hot-spare available for fail-over.

I've found that using an older computer, one of several Linux distros, a cheap Promise raid array card, and a couple of 1G NICs bridged in my favorite mode yield a much improved performance over the ReadyNAS at a similar price.

The DIY option is definitely a valid one, but not everyone wants to go down that road. As I said in the review: I have enough parts lying around to do it, but the fact is, I haven't. I honestly believe there's value in the dedicated NAS form factor, primarily because I really just want to treat it as an appliance.....etc.

Everyone has their own priorities. At one point I owned both a Honda Civic and an older Porsche 911. Did I enjoy the high maintenance costs for the 911? NO. Did I enjoy the unmistakeable driving experience? YES!!! The exact opposite goes for the Honda....it was an appliance. I was lucky to have the best of both worlds, at the same time.

BTW, the NAS in daily use on my home network is a Marvell-based unit, and the performance is more than adequate in that context.

My first DIY NAS used the Linux FreeNAS OS and a software RAID 5, but I the performance, even using SATA 1TB drives (and 4GB of RAM) was not what I expected. A dedicated solution, such as one that uses the Marvell controller you mentioned, is much superior and has the added advantage of being a simple-to-use appliance. Marvell and Tuxera announced, earlier this year, a strategic alliance and Netgear was quick to implement solutions using their technology in the ReadyNAS line. A high-availability NAS is a permanent part of my network, both at home and work. Coupled with a reasonable backup strategy, downtime is minimal.

I am amazed at the transfer rates on this unit. I mighty pick on up in the future. Currently I am using a ReadyNAS Duo and it's a little slow. I'm under the impression that this is from the speed of the CPU they used.

I went with a ReadyNAS because I didn't want another computer with it's associated keyboard/mouse/monitor and all the cables. I wanted a nice little box sitting in the corner of one desk. I also got a great FTP site without having to dig around for FTP software and set it up (configuring the ReadyNAS is pretty easy, even for a noob like me). So I can access my NAS from anywhere, and it's a great media server for my PS3 and our WiFi tablets. A PC as a NAS may out perform it, but it's nowhere near as convenient.

It's using 2 x 2TB Seagate "Green" drives in Raid 1. Overall I'm pretty happy with it. I also have a WD "MyBook" (or whatever it's called) single drive NAS. I've had it for a few years now and so far it's been reliable, but it's dead slow. Funny enough, both manufacturers go out of their way to advertise "Gigabit" connections, but the WD is fast as lightening if it ever gets close to 10MB/s, while I'm lucky if I'm reading a long file from the ReadyNAS and I get 43MB/s. It only writes at about 18MB/s, but I hear that may partially be due to the RAID 1.

The Duo/NV+ v2 are very, very different. They use a Marvell ARM processor and due to the different CPU architecture have different firmware as well. The ARM CPU is much faster than the Infrant Sparc CPU in your Duo.

Partly the 5400 RPM drives that are in there. I've done all my NAS testing with 7200 RPM drives, which may not match up with everyone's idea of a suitable long-term storage device. Problem is, I don't have anything slower in the house. I have 7200; 10,000; and 15,000 RPM units here, not a single 5400 RPM drive. Even the 2.5" HDDs that I own are 7200 RPM (not counting the Velociraptors...)

Sorry for a couple of noobish questions.I read the review but admittedly don't understand much of it. I have 2x 3TB drives I wish to use in a box like this for RAID 1 Mirroring. Will the full 3 tb be accessible to a 32bit XP machine? Will I be able to connect with usb 2.0 or will I get better throughput with the Intel(R) PRO/1000 MTW Network Connection.

It's a old machine but I really don't wanna replace if for a year or so as I have an i5 laptop for heavy processing and a superior desktop is unaffordable. I'm thinking £150 spent on a NAS will still have practical value in 3 years time whereas a used PC will look no better than this one. Thanks for any help.

In your situation I would suggest a ReadyNAS Duo like I have. You can access the entire thing from Windows XP because the NAS has it's own little computer taking care of all the formatting issues.

NAS is Network Attached Storage, so you will be connecting it through your network, not USB. This will allow you to access it from both your laptop and your desktop assuming you have either a router or a hub on your network to plug it into. If the unit you select has a USB port, it's most likely for plugging in a printer or a USB hard drive for more added storage.

There are many great NAS solutions you could chose. You can't go wrong with Netgear products, but I've heard some decent things about some of the newer d-link NASs like the ShareCenter. All of them can be a bit of a chore to figure out. They all use local webpages to configure them through your network. Personally I would recommend staying away from the Western Digital (WD) "MyBooks". I have one here and it's dead slow, and you can't replace the drive in it.

I'm also using a Netgear ReadyNAS Duo, which you can get for under $200 and it works great. Note you will have to purchase hard drives to install in it as it's just an enclosure.

If you already have a pair of 3TB drives, the ReadyNAS Duo will work for you. The thing you ARE giving up is future expansion, to larger RAID volumes and higher level RAID configurations like RAID 5. It all depends on if you are comfortable that 3TB of storage space will hold you for the next several years, and if you want to spend the addditional $$ to get a 4-bay NAS to allow for possible expansion. These are questions only YOU can answer. I think you hit the nail on the head (sorry for the American eexpression...), by separating out the value of storage v. the value of your PC. Storage is something you will always need (unless you go into the cloud), and it's worthwhile investing in a solid solution that will serve you for a good period of time. How long that time is, is a personal question, as I said above.

thanks for the advice Mergatroid and Bruce. 3TB is the minimum storage I require and I'll be looking to add additional drives asap. The extra cost of 4 vs 2 bays is only 50% more. The cost of per TB storage will halve also with only one extra drive.

Then by all means the 4 bay solution is a good fit for you. I'm not super experienced at NASs, having only owned two of them, but I do like how easy it was to set up the ReadyNAS, and I love the FTP software it came with so you can set up your own FTP site for access over the Internet. Very handy. It's also effortless to get it to work as a media server for PS3, XBox, Tablets and phones using WiFi and LAN. It was just a matter of checking one little box and it just worked. I love streaming movies from my ReadyNAS to my Galaxy Tab 10.1 over WiFi.

You may want to poke around here a little more too as they have reviewed other NAS-like products that are pretty cool and allow you to RAID over the network. Some of them will work on both LAN and USB, which is pretty sweet. I haven't tried them myself, but they got decent reviews.

Thanks. I've had a look around but tbh I'm pretty skint and this seems the cheapest option with long term practical value - it's less than 150 quid in the UK and I had thought all NAS stuff was out of reach. I only get looking at this cos a 80 quid Oreco dual drive bay thingy didn't cut the mustard. Netgear seem to support it well and there's a 3 year warranty. I need reliability and capacity more than speed so this seems to fit the bill.

#Do I have to reboot my ReadyNas NV+ v2 to get RAID 1 —
Kelly2012-10-25 05:51

Hi All

I am a complete novice but when my partner's machine crashed and as my Maxtor drive (160g) is now full I needed some reliable storage. I looked into things and went for the Netgear particularly because I wanted the Media streaming and storage capability of a NAS with a mirrored back up. I got a 4 bay for expansion downstream but for years I expect 2T of data will be loads for us. I got 2 x 2T WD Red's and have synchronised them but now it seems I can't change the RAID option now. I never caught where to do it in set up but do I now need to do a factory reboot which wipes the disks and reformats them to be able to get a RAID 1 set up? I think this is also called FLEX? Also the write speed seems incredibly slow. I think my router (BT Home Hub 3) may be the problem I have BT infinity and would have thought this meant stuff would fly over the network - but maybe not? Will that mean I can't stream from the NAS to the rest of my devices. Since the NAS install there does seem to be having a significant impact on the speed of all the devices in the house.All advice greatly appreciately thx Kelly

What drive configuration do you have now? I recommend setting up the unit with X-RAID2 at the beginnning. If you specified FLEX at the initial setup, you may have to wipe the entire contents of the disks in order to create the RAID 1 volume. You HAVE TO chhoese either X-RAID2 or FLEX during setup, you can't use both, or switch without going through a ground-up setup process again.

With the X-RAID2 software that Netgear created, you can go from a single disk or JBOD directly to a RAID volume without reformatting the disks. Even if you started with FLEX, though, you can use the FLEX Software to set up RAID 0,1, or 5. The only problem is you can't migrate between them with that re-format step. That's why I recommend the X-RAID2, especially if you are starting out with two drives and plan to expand later. Take a look here: #readynas.com/?p=656

As for the speed issues, it could be your router, I guess. I'm thinking that "BT" means British Telecom. I'm in the states, so I don't know much about their products, services, or hardware. I have never experienced any negative effects on the network as a whole by installing any NAS device on the network. In fact,I've had three NAS units from three different vendors running on the same network, all at once, and didn't have any issues. So, I'm having a hard time understanding how the NAS would slow down other devices (computers) on the network.

Map one of the folders on the NAS as a network drive (Right click on the folder in Windows explorer...) and then run the ATTO drive benchmark on it. Compare that to the one I did in this review.

Ok. I've ordered the ReadyNas NV+ v2. I have 2 3tb drives to go in it. Both have the same data on them. If I put one it I assume I lose the data on it yes? If so then I need a way to transfer the data from my second drive to the NAS prior to adding the second drive to the NAS? Now as mentioned I have no PC capable of running the 3TB drive internally so I'm thinking I'll need a 3TB drive enclosure to connect directly to the NAS via USB for the transfer. If I can't connect directly I think my laptop can manage the transfer. I am right about this stuff? Thanks for your continued assistance :)

Every drive you put in will have its data erased, the first, the second, the third, etc. Check the online HW and SW manuals for a possible exception, but I don't think there is one.

BTW, What do you mean when you say "Both drives have the same data on them."? Were they in a RIAD1 setup? Are they two separate backups of your data? Is one your primary storage, and the other the backup for the primary drive? How did they get the same data on them, and how much data (..GB..) is on them?

You will need to get one more 3TB drive that doesn't need to have its data retained. Put that in first, format it, and copy one of your exisiting 3TB drives over to it via that USB drive enclosure. Then put that drive in, and create a linear volume or a RAID0 volume. Then copy the data from your second drive over. Then install that drive and use the X-RAID2 software to migrate the volume over to RAID5.

thanks for info. One drive was cloned from the other - each has about 2TB of data on them. I was fairly sure I'd lose whatever data that was on a drive I put into the NAS I just wasn't sure if the NAS would read from an external drive to transfer the data to the NAS. Once done the external can go into the NAS. Looks like I just need an enclosure right now and I wait for the price of drives to come down before adding a third.

There is a backup function in the ReadyNAS software. Once you get one of the drives installed, you can suse the backup function to pull the data from the second drive onto the NAS. Just be REALLY REALLY sure that the data came over completely before you install the second drive.

I have ordered an NV+ V2 having had an earlier NV+ for a number of years.

I've backed up all the data from the NV+ but I'm curious as to whether I can just replace all the disks from the NV+ & put these into the NV 2 plus without ill effects. It will be an interesting exercise as I think the worst that can happen is that everything gets reinitialized. It really depends how much information is carried in the firmware of the old NV+

I will let you all know what happens when I do the disk swap. This is an important exercise because of the scenario of your existing NAS unit needing to be replaced due to hardware failure.